[PBEM] Ride On: Setup

[EPW]

I'm going to drop out of this, its just going to take too long with 8 players.

[Keygen]

Grandpa Troll and Nuke Boy haven't responded yet. I'll try to reach them...

[Keygen]

OK EPW, I understand

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by EPW
I'm going to drop out of this, its just going to take too long with 8 players.

For similiar reasons, but I am in the middle of adding an additional facility to my area, and extremely loaded down with wonderful opportunities with work

Maybe the next go around..perhaps

Gramps

[Av8tor]

My preferences are

1. American
2. Roosevelt
3. Email
4. Noble
5. GMT-5

I hope I got them all right.

[Keygen]

OK, I guess we're ready to start

DrDeke, when ever possible please setup the dedicated machine you've mentioned, and create me an account.

We will play without the expansion (Warlords).

Soltz and DrDeke, I will need your emails. You can use Apolyton's mail form for that purpose

[Keygen]

Since we are going to use PitBoss I will set it up for 48 hours given time for each participant to play his turn.

Let me know if you disagree with this.

[DrDeke]

48 Hour timeout sounds good to me. What happens if someone doesn't make the timeout? Does the AI play their turn or does the turn just end (hopefully the latter)?

My email is drdeke-civ4@inactivex.net. I'll have the details on the pitboss server shortly.

-DrDeke

[Keygen]

I am not sure but I intent to try it out as soon as you setup PitBoss

[snoopy369]

The turn is skipped if it's not played in time. However, if you set up auto-moves and such those are processed; so you in theory could easily plan several moves in advance, especially with auto-explore set for your scout(s) in the early going. Just make sure to always have your non-automated units planned one or two turns in advance (even if you might change that plan), and always have two builds queued up in each city; and choose techs ahead of time as well.

[DrDeke]

I've set up the PitBoss server and sent the login information to Keygen. I will be flying from Detroit to Tucson tomorrow, so I will be out of contact for most of the day. I will be returning late Tuesday night. I am not sure whether I will be able to play any Civ4 turns from Tucson, but I will if I can if the game starts by then.

In any case, I will be in email and phone contact while in Tucson. You can email me or ask Keygen for my cell number if you want to contact me.

I'm very excited about getting this game going and hope we can get up and running shortly.

-DrDeke

[ricketyclik]

I'm excited!

[Keygen]

OK, email received. I managed to create a couple of games using PitBoss on DrDeke's machine for testing purposes.

What I discovered while experimenting with PitBoss so far is that you can't run more than one game at the same time. That is quite a limitation, running a dedicated server for quite some time only for running a single game Unless of cource I did something wrong and this is not the case...

Another limitation is when setting a time limit to play a turn, that goes for the turn itself and not the player. What I mean is that if for example you set the time limit to 48 hours then all players altogether must play their turn within 48 hours and not each player alone. If the later that would mean that in a 6-player game would take nearly 12 day at the worst case to complete a turn but that is not the case. If the first player play his turn after 24 hours and the next player fails to play within the remaining 24 hours he, and all the players after him will lose their turn. Simply not setting any time limitation will take off one of PitBoss supposed strengths: steady turn flow.

A third limitation I've found is that once a game is created you can not change the time limit, if set, which could be very useful in my opinion.

I conclude, considering all the above, that PitBoss only worth the time and effort if all participants in a game have the ability to gather and play online every 1-2 month(s) but only able to play for a fragment of time in the between thus use PitBoss.

Having said all that I am not sure if I or you still want to try PitBoss. Especially for DrDeke, as the server that hosts PitBoss is running in a virtual machine, wasting valuable resources from the primary machine...

We can always use the old fashion way, play by email

[DrDeke]

I've gotta make this quick because I'm about to head to the airport.

First of all, don't worry about using resources on that machine. It's not a problem at all, that machine doesn't have any actual "production" uses. It's not my personal computer; it just does some silly tasks like streaming music to my cell phone and serving as a testbed for me to study Active Directory administration. I've got it running in a VM so that if the hardware were to fail, I can easily switch it over to a different computer within a day without losing any data.

I was reading on some forums last night that it actually is possible to host multiple PitBoss games on the same machine; you just have to change the UDP port in the PitBoss ini and the clients (and I would have to open that port on the firewall which would be no problem).

As for the heart of the matter, I do like the idea of everybody getting together every month or so to play at the same time - I'm sure it would speed the progress of the game. But, it does sound like there are some significant drawbacks to PitBoss (the time limit issues).

Really, it doesn't matter to me whether we use PitBoss or traditional email. Don't let the use of my compute resources stop you from using PitBoss; it's no problem at all. But if you (as in you all) think it'd be better to do traditional e-mail, that'd be absolutely fine with me.

-DrDeke

[snoopy369]

The time limit issue is ... different, for simul versus sequential turns. For simul turns, it is for the whole turn - but of course you can play any time during that, regardless of the (non existent) turn order. For sequential, it is the time limit for each player. Once someone plays their turn, they end turn, and the next player's turn starts; so the entire 48 hours or whatever don't have to pass. However, each player gets his own 48 hours or whatever to play the turn.

Simultaneous turns gives a much faster game, but some people prefer the sequential turn order.